Month: February 2008

Just watched 5th Episode and it was the best ever, IMHO. Desmond races against time to find Penny in 1996 and their love for each other make the best episodes. This dram series is full of cultural references, physics, time travel and all other mind blowing stuff. Desmond realizes that he is caught in a some kind of time warp that is toggling his consciousness between two different bodies at two different points in time and space. I don’t wanna talk about what Daniel Faraday had in his journal, especially a page that reads: “If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.”; fantastic stuff :)

An immune system is a collection of mechanisms within an organism that protects against disease by identifying and killing pathogens and tumor cells. It detects a wide variety of agents, from viruses to parasitic worms, and needs to distinguish them from the organism’s own healthy cells and tissues in order to function properly.

Now researchers have found the behaviour of immune system genes varies from race to race – potentially affecting how they respond to infection. The Chicago University team looked at over 9,000 genes in 180 people, half Caucasian and half from Nigeria. They found differences between the two races in 5% of key genes. The American Journal of Human Genetics study may help explain why some groups are more vulnerable to disease, and aid development of more tailored treatment.

According to wikipedia, Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter of unknown composition that does not emit or reflect enough electromagnetic radiation to be observed directly, but whose presence can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter. Structures larger than galaxies, as well as Big Bang cosmology, dark matter accounts for the vast majority of mass in the observable universe. Now a new giant sheets of dark matter detected:

The most colossal structures in the universe have been detected by astronomers who tuned into how the structures subtly bend galactic light. The newfound filaments and sheets of dark matter form a gigantic features stretching across more than 270 million light-years of space–three times larger than any other known structure and 2,000 times the size of our own galaxy. Because the dark matter, by definition, is invisible to telescopes, the only way to detect it on such grand scales is by surveying huge numbers of distant galaxies and working out how their images, as seen from telescopes, are being weakly tweaked and distorted by any dark matter structures in intervening space.

Our eyes detects light. Light enters the pupil and is focused on the retina by the lens. Light-sensitive nerve cells called rods (for brightness) and cones (for color) react to the light. They interact with each other and send messages to the brain that indicate brightness, color, and contour. This article explains easy ways to improve your vision, so that you can enjoy beautiful world:

They are two of your most precious possessions, but chances are, you take your eyes for granted. Most of us do. But think for a second what life would be like without being able to gaze on your grandchild or your flower garden or even navigate the kitchen without incident. Prevent Blindness America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to vision issues, estimates that 50,000 people lose their sight needlessly every year and that 80 million Americans are at risk of eye diseases that can lead to low vision and even blindness.

Fish are not just cold-blooded aquatic vertebrates but little smart too. According to new research fish can count. Scientists have found that North American mosquito fish have the ability to count up to four. Fish have a limited ability to count how many other fish are nearby. This means that they have similar counting abilities to those observed in apes, monkeys and dolphins and humans with very limited mathematical ability.

Get Firefox 3 web browser that includes tabbed browsing, a spell checker, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, and an integrated search system.

Mozilla Firefox is a free web browser managed by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox had 18.41% of the recorded usage share of web browsers as of May 2008, making it the second-most popular browser in current use worldwide, after Internet Explorer. Firefox is well known for security, speed and ease of use.

The US has successfully struck a disabled spy satellite with a missile fired from a warship in waters west of Hawaii, military officials say. So there is no danger to all of us (hydrazine exposure). As reported earlier the satellite, which no longer can be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down. The Pentagon (the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington, Virginia.) used a missile to shoot down the satellite:

Operatives had only a 10-second window to hit the satellite – USA 193 – which went out of control shortly after it was launched in December 2006. Officials were worried its hydrazine fuel could do harm, but it is not yet known if the fuel tank was destroyed. On Tuesday, a US State Department spokesman stressed that the action was meant to protect people from the hazardous fuel and was not a weapons test. The US government has also denied claims that the main aim of the operation was to destroy secret components on USA 193. Officials say classified parts would be burned up in the atmosphere and, in any case, that would not be a reason for shooting down the satellite.

This is really a good news. A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system consisting of stars, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and dark matter. Our Sun and Earth are part of the Milky Way galaxy. Basically the Sun is one of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy; the Solar System includes the Earth. Now scientist suggests more than half the Sun-like stars in the Milky Way could have similar planetary systems just like our solar system. In other words there may be many more worlds in our galaxy. From BBC news site:

Rocky planets, possibly with conditions suitable for life, may be more common than previously thought in our galaxy, a study has found.

New evidence suggests more than half the Sun-like stars in the Milky Way could have similar planetary systems.

There may also be hundreds of undiscovered worlds in outer parts of our Solar System, astronomers believe.

Future studies of such worlds will radically alter our understanding of how planets are formed, they say.

Parvathy Omanakuttan, Femina Miss India World 2008, is also the First Runner Up of Miss World 2008. She was crowned at the Miss World Grand Finale at Johannesburg, South Africa on 13 December 2008. She was also the second runner up of Miss World Top Model contest held on 3 December 2008.